Few aspects of Catholic faith provoke stronger reactions in low-church Christian circles than the place given to Mary and the saints.

For people who have learned that prayer should be addressed directly to God through Jesus Christ, Catholic prayers, statues, processions, and Marian feasts can seem alien. When Catholics kneel before an image of Mary or ask a saint for help, it can look as though the distinction between the Creator and creation has disappeared.

The word idolatry is therefore never far away.

I come from a Norwegian low-church background and later became Catholic. For that reason, I do not want to dismiss this reaction as ignorance or prejudice. It often springs from a sincere desire to preserve Christ as the sole foundation and mediator of faith.

At the same time, the criticism often rests on an understanding of Catholic faith that the Church itself does not recognize.

The question, then, is not only whether Catholics worship Mary and the saints. It is also what Catholics believe they are actually doing—and whether the Catholic explanation answers the low-church objections.

The Great Stumbling Block

In the circles I knew, Mary had little place outside the Christmas story. She was the mother of Jesus and an example of obedience, but she was not someone to whom one turned in prayer.

The saints belonged mainly to Church history. They could be admired for their faith, courage, or work, but they were dead. The idea that they might still have an active place in the life of the Church was foreign to us.

Catholic practice looks very different.

Churches are dedicated to Mary and various saints. Images and statues occupy a visible place. Saints’ days are celebrated, relics are venerated, and believers ask the saints for their intercession. Mary is called the Mother of God, Mother of the Church, and Queen. The Rosary has a central place in the prayer life of many Catholics.

It is not difficult to understand why this can seem as though something has come between the believer and Christ.

If Mary is regarded as more approachable or merciful than Jesus, it can also create the impression that one must go through her to reach a sterner Son. Such an idea will rightly provoke resistance among Christians who have learned to approach Christ with confidence.

The low-church reaction cannot simply be dismissed, then. It touches on something essential: In whom do we place our trust?

Worship and Veneration

The Catholic Church draws a clear distinction between worship and veneration.

Worship belongs to God alone: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. No angel, saint, or even Mary may receive this worship. They are all created beings who are themselves dependent on the grace of God.

The saints are venerated because God’s grace has become visible in their lives. Mary receives a special veneration because of her unique place in salvation history, but she is not worshipped as divine.

In theological language, latria has traditionally referred to the worship of God, dulia to the veneration of the saints, and hyperdulia to the special veneration shown to Mary. Such technical terms do not resolve the disagreement in themselves, but they show that the Catholic tradition has deliberately sought to draw clear boundaries.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 971 emphasizes that Marian devotion differs essentially from the adoration given to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

When a Catholic kneels before a statue, therefore, the statue itself is not being honored as a deity. The image points to the person it represents, much as a photograph can evoke love and respect without anyone believing that the paper is the person.

Still, outward actions do not explain themselves. Someone who sees them without knowing the thought behind them can hardly know what is taking place in the believer’s heart. Catholics should therefore understand why the practice can be misunderstood, especially by people from a tradition in which kneeling and prayer are associated almost exclusively with the worship of God.

A Communion Death Does Not Abolish

Devotion to the saints is rooted in belief in the communion of saints.

This phrase also appears in the Apostles’ Creed used in Lutheran churches. In Catholic understanding, the communion includes more than the Christians now living on earth. It also includes those who have died in Christ and now live with God.

Death does not sever the bond between the members of Christ’s body.

The Catechism describes the Church on earth and the saints in heaven as one communion. The saints have not become gods or omniscient beings. They are human beings living in perfect union with Christ who continue to pray for the Church. The Catechism on the communion of saints

The New Testament does not offer a complete description of later Catholic devotion to the saints. Catholic theology nevertheless points, among other things, to the cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 12, the heavenly figures presenting the prayers of the saints in Revelation 5 and 8, and Jesus’ words that God is not the God of the dead but of the living.

These passages do not by themselves prove every form of invocation of the saints. They belong to a broader Catholic understanding of the Church as one living communion on both sides of death.

This difference in starting point matters.

If those who have died in Christ are, for all practical purposes, entirely beyond our reach until the resurrection, addressing them seems strange. If, however, the Church remains one communion in Christ, the idea of their intercession becomes easier to understand.

What Does It Mean to Ask a Saint for Intercession?

When Catholics say that they pray to Mary or a saint, the wording can create misunderstandings.

To pray can also mean to ask someone for something. The basic idea is not that the saint independently grants salvation or grace. The saint is asked to pray to God.

This is often compared with asking a Christian friend to pray for us.

If I can ask another member of my congregation to pray for me, why should I not ask the same of a Christian who now lives with God?

The comparison explains the Catholic way of thinking, but it does not remove every difficulty. A low-church Christian can rightly reply that the living friend can hear the request, while the Bible does not explain as clearly how a departed saint can hear the prayers of many people.

Catholic teaching does not claim that the saints are omniscient. If they know our prayers, it is because they live in God and share in what God allows them to know. Their intercession therefore does not compete with God’s power but depends entirely upon it.

Even so, a real disagreement remains about what constitutes sufficient biblical and ecclesial grounds for this practice. That disagreement should not be hidden behind the comparison with asking a friend to pray.

Why Does Mary Have a Unique Place?

Mary is not merely one saint among many.

She is venerated first of all because she is the mother of Jesus. The title Mother of God does not mean that she is the source of God or is herself divine. It expresses that the child she bore is truly God and truly human in one person.

The title primarily safeguards a truth about Christ.

The New Testament also presents Mary as someone who receives the word of God in faith. She says yes at the Annunciation, bears Christ into the world, points to him at Cana, and stands at the cross.

In Mary’s song of praise, she says that all generations will call her blessed. Catholics therefore believe that it is not enough to mention Mary at Christmas and then allow her to disappear from the Church’s consciousness.

She is seen as the first and foremost disciple of Jesus and as an image of the Church: she receives God’s word, bears Christ, and gives him to the world.

At the same time, everything she is has been received.

Catholic teaching does not claim that Mary possesses a saving power alongside Christ. The Catechism emphasizes that her influence depends entirely on Christ’s one mediation and draws all its power from it. She does not stand between Christ and humanity as an alternative savior. She herself belongs to the people he has redeemed.

In the same way, the purpose of the Rosary is not to replace Jesus with Mary. The prayer leads the believer through events in the life of Christ, from his conception and birth to his suffering and resurrection.

Whether this purpose is always perceived with equal clarity by everyone who prays the Rosary is another question. Its official understanding, however, is Christ-centered.

Christ as the One Mediator

The strongest Protestant objection usually appeals to 1 Timothy 2:5:

For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.

Catholic faith confesses the same. No saint can reconcile humanity with God. No one else has given his life for the sins of the world or opened the way to the Father.

Yet a few verses earlier in the same chapter, Paul urges Christians to offer prayers and intercessions for everyone. Christ’s unique mediation does not prevent Christians from praying for one another.

The Catholic understanding is that the saints’ intercession participates in Christ’s mediation without adding anything to his saving work. All intercession, whether it comes from a Christian on earth or a saint in heaven, has its value through him.

But this is also where the real Lutheran objection lies.

The question is not merely whether the saints can pray. The Lutheran confessional writings also allow that the saints in heaven pray for the Church. The question is whether we have biblical grounds for addressing them and being certain that they hear us.

This is more than a dispute about words.

What the Lutheran Tradition Retained

It may be surprising how positively the Lutheran confessional writings speak of the saints.

Article XXI of the Augsburg Confession says that the saints should be remembered so that we may imitate their faith and good works.

The Apology of the Augsburg Confession describes three ways in which the saints may be honored: We can thank God for them, have our faith strengthened by what God did in their lives, and imitate their faith and virtues.

The distance between the traditions is therefore not as simple as saying that Catholics have saints while Lutherans do not.

Both can thank God for the saints, tell their stories, and regard them as examples of faith. The disagreement chiefly concerns whether the saints should also be invoked and asked for their intercession.

The Lutheran confessional writings fear that the saints may be given a role that belongs to Christ alone. They are especially critical of the idea that Christ is stern while the saints are more compassionate and easier to approach.

Catholics should take this criticism seriously.

If Mary or a saint is perceived as protection from Jesus, something has fallen out of balance. Mary cannot be more merciful than the Son who gave his life for the world.

When Devotion Loses Its Balance

There is a difference between the Church’s official teaching and everything that can occur in popular piety.

Prayers and expressions can sometimes give Mary or a saint an independence that Catholic teaching actually rejects. Some people may become more preoccupied with private revelations, particular statues, or special promises than with the Gospel, the sacraments, and life with Christ.

This does not mean that all popular devotion is superstition. For many people, Marian devotion provides a language of trust, care, and hope. It can lead them closer to Christ and help them hold fast to faith.

But not every expression is necessarily equally sound.

The Second Vatican Council urged Catholics to avoid both exaggerated presentations of Mary and such narrow-minded reserve that her biblical and ecclesial significance disappears. Authentic Marian devotion can be built neither on exaggeration nor on empty sentimentality. Lumen gentium, paragraphs 66–67

In 2025, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith also published a document on Marian titles. It emphasizes both the value of the faithful’s love for Mary and the danger of formulations that can create confusion about her relationship to Christ. Certain expressions should be avoided if they obscure Christ’s unique role. Mater Populi fidelis

The Church itself thus acknowledges that the boundaries must also be protected in practice.

Can the Reaction Also Lead to a Loss?

Protestant criticism has helped protect something essential: Christ is the only Savior, and every person may come directly to him.

But the reaction against devotion to the saints can also cause something to be lost.

Mary can be reduced to a minor figure in the Christmas story. The saints can become little more than names in a Church history book. The communion of saints is confessed in the Creed but has little influence on how the Church is understood.

Christianity can thereby be reduced to the relationship between God and the individual, supplemented by fellowship with those who happen to be alive at the same time as we are.

The Catholic tradition reminds us that no Christian starts entirely from the beginning. We belong to a people stretching through the centuries. Faith has been borne, prayed, and lived by people before us.

The saints do not merely point to themselves. At their best, they show the many different ways in which the life of Christ can take shape in people, times, and cultures.

Mary has a unique place in this communion because her life points to him in an unparalleled way. Her words at Cana can also serve as a summary of her place in Catholic faith:

Do whatever he tells you.

If Marian devotion does not lead in that direction, it has lost its center.

From Doctrine to the Filipino Home

The question of Mary and the saints is not merely about theological definitions.

In many Catholic societies, Mary and the saints are present in homes, on walls, in processions, in family prayers, and in the great feasts. They form part of the way faith becomes visible and is passed from one generation to the next.

This is especially true in the Philippines.

To understand an image of Mary in a Filipino home, therefore, it is necessary to know that the family does not believe it has installed a competing deity. The image expresses belonging to a larger ecclesial family and trust in Mary’s intercession.

At the same time, it must remain possible to ask how the Church’s official teaching actually appears in popular devotion. Is it always clear that Christ is at the center? What significance does Mary have as a mother figure? How do prayers, images, and feasts connect faith with family life?

Such questions cannot be answered simply by quoting the Catechism. They must also be explored through what people actually do and say.

But it is easier to approach this tradition fairly once its foundations have been clarified.

Catholics do not worship Mary or the saints as gods. They venerate them as members of Christ’s body and ask for their intercession.

This does not mean that every low-church objection has thereby been answered, or that every Catholic practice is above criticism.

But the disagreement becomes clearer.

It is not about whether Christ is the only Savior. Both traditions confess that he is.

It is about how extensive the communion around Christ is—and whether death sets a boundary to the communion of saints.

Sources and Further Reading

Catholic Teaching

Lutheran Confessional Writings